Health Care - Small Business People Need to be Involved
Health care is a huge question for small businesses in the United States. Everyone who is a sole proprietor knows how expensive it is to buy insurance for themselves and their families. Catastrophic coverage is usually the only thing small business owners can afford. When you are the driving force behind your business you cannot afford to go bare. A broken hip can bankrupt you. The guy who runs a take-a-way pizza joint in the local strip mall works a second job for the health insurance coverage.
It is rare to find a small business, especially a start-up, who offers health care coverage of any kind to their employees. They get it from their spouses or parents. A not so secret secret is the way human resource departments instruct their low paid workers to seek state paid health care insurance for their children.
The cost of health care and insurance at large companies and governments is a big problem for small businesses. How so? Almost all the money that would have gone into workers’ wages over the past 5 to 10 years have gone into paying health care insurance. The money the auto workers at GM don’t have in their pay checks doesn’t buy burgers for the kids after the soccer game. When you add in the fact that a dollar in wages is spent 7 times before it’s used up then there are many more small and large businesses that suffer.
A dozen years ago we in the US tried to have a national debate on the question. It was a bad idea to have the discussion at that level and it went badly. It was so divisive the outcome stifled debate for years. Lately a more pragmatic and less political approach is taking place. Several states are proposing and implementing programs to address a wide variety of health care and payment issues.
There is good news and bad news. The good news is that some is attempting to do something rather than talk about theory. The bad news is that some parts of these attempts will fail and some special interest groups will try to paint all the programs with the same brush of failure. This is were small business people come in.
This debate needs small business people to stand up and be heard. We are a pragmatic bunch. We have to be. We take what works and use it. Those things that don’t work well, we attempt to learn for the failures and fix them. This is too big an issue for the think-tanks and the policy wonks. It impacts us and our ability to be successful. Contact you state representatives and governors. Get involved with people who have your interests and let your state government know what you think. Support what works. Fix what doesn’t. Stand up! Be heard!
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2 opinions for Health Care - Small Business People Need to be Involved
Ian Campbell
Jan 26, 2008 at 6:19 pm
With all the activities going on in the world in regard to health and human rights, business people esp small business people are not represented. this group of people work long hours, I dont see any government body come around to check the welfare of the Business people and their families. there are many business people esp famers and small retailers who live below the poverty line, yet Governments still pressure them for taxes, badger them with regulations and load their work load with burocratic rubbish
Jean
Jan 29, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Amen, Ian. Small business people are the ones who make the economy run. But we don’t have the political clout of big automakers, and other big businesses, so we get … nothing. I wonder what would happen if it were easier for small businesses and their employees to get health care at a “reasonable” price? Or, is that just an impossible dream?
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